Youssef Laanaya

Founder and CEO of BLACKVAULT

Security that holds in production.

Eleven years protecting banks, insurers and public institutions, in fifteen countries. I help organisations that cannot afford a mistake master their cyber risk and keep control of their data.

Let’s talk about your security See what I stand for
Black and white portrait of Youssef Laanaya in a tweed jacket.
11
years in the field
70+
security projects delivered
40
certifications
15
countries

What I stand for

  • Security is judged in production.

    An architecture is only worth what it does on the day of the incident. I commit to what works at three in the morning, not to what looks good in a meeting.

  • Sovereignty is not optional.

    Your logs and your data describe your organisation better than any audit. They must stay with you, under your control.

  • Technology is not enough.

    A tool without a method produces alerts, not security. It takes clear priorities, owners, and trained teams.

  • Discretion is part of the contract.

    I name no client, here or anywhere else. What you entrust to me never feeds my communication.

Who I am

Youssef Laanaya in a black shirt, arms crossed.

I lead BLACKVAULT, a cybersecurity vendor and operator based in Casablanca. We build our own detection, investigation and remediation platform, and we run it in our SOC around the clock.

For eleven years I have protected the information systems of banks, insurers and public institutions across Morocco, West Africa and Central Africa. Along the way I have been an engineer, an auditor, a consultant, a trainer and a manager.

I know the field because I come from it. And I know how to talk to a board because I answer to one.

Based in
Casablanca, Morocco
Languages
Arabic, French, English
Education
Systems, network and security engineering. Master’s degree in strategic management.

What I do for you

Five ways to work together, depending on where you stand.

Tell me what you need

  • Advisory and strategy

    Clarify your priorities and build a roadmap your leadership can fund and your teams can deliver.

  • Audit and assessment

    Know where you really stand: architecture, directory, configurations, organisation. A clear finding, and fixes ranked by risk.

  • Expertise and architecture

    Design your security projects and see them through: SOC, privileged access, data protection, infrastructure.

  • Programme delivery

    Hold the scope, budget and deadlines of complex projects, from the requirements to formal acceptance.

  • Training and speaking

    Train your technical teams, brief your executives, speak at your events.

My domains

Security operations
SOC, SIEM, EDR and XDR, NDR, threat intelligence
Identity and access
Privileged accounts, strong authentication, Active Directory
Data protection
Data loss prevention, classification, encryption, PKI and HSM
Infrastructure security
Network, web and email, SD-WAN, patch management
Governance and compliance
ISO 27001, ISO 42001, PCI DSS, NIST, risk management
Delivery
PRINCE2, ITIL 4, Scrum, CAPEX and OPEX budgets

Journey

I have worked for , and : banks, insurers and public institutions, in fifteen countries. Their names stay confidential. What I learned there fits in seven verbs.

  1. Operate

    I started where systems break: in IT support, then in server rooms. Monitoring a network, fixing an outage in the middle of the night, keeping more than two hundred organisations in production. You do not learn security from books there. You learn what an outage costs.

  2. Build

    Then I built. Privileged access vaults, data loss prevention, detection on endpoints and networks, encryption, key infrastructures: I designed and deployed these architectures one by one, through to formal acceptance, for organisations that cannot afford a mistake.

  3. Audit

    Auditing means reading an information system the way an attacker would. Directories, servers, security configurations: I learned to find what will give way first, and above all to write it down so that it gets fixed.

  4. Advise

    Good advice often starts with a no. No, this tool will not solve that problem. No, not in that order. I have supported security leaders from the requirements to the roadmap, standing up for the solution that holds in production rather than the one that shines in a demo.

  5. Teach

    As a certified trainer, I passed on to technical teams what I wish someone had explained to me earlier. Teaching forces you to truly understand: you cannot teach what you only half know how to do.

  6. Lead

    A team of engineers, then projects, then a business unit: budgets, schedules, steering committees, tenders. It taught me that engineering is not enough. You need clear priorities, and someone who answers for them.

  7. Found

    Today I bring these crafts together in one company. BLACKVAULT designs its own cybersecurity solutions and runs them in its own SOC. It is the logical next step: building what I wish I had found in the field.

Certifications

Proof, not promises. Forty certifications, from governance to engineering: each box holds one.

40 certifications

  • ISACACISM, Certified Information Security Manager
  • ISO/IEC 27001Lead Implementer
  • ISO/IEC 42001Lead Implementer, AI management
  • PRINCE2Foundation, Project Management
  • ITIL 4IT Service Management
  • SCRUMstudyScrum Master Certified
  • SCRUMstudyScrum Fundamentals Certified
  • EC-CouncilCertified Ethical Hacker
  • KasperskyNext XDR Expert
  • KasperskyNext EDR Optimum
  • KasperskyNext EDR Foundations
  • KasperskyEndpoint Security and Management
  • Trend MicroVision One, Endpoint Security Advanced
  • Trend MicroVision One, Email and Collaboration Security Advanced
  • FireEyeSystems Engineer
  • CyberArkCertified Sentry
  • CyberArkCertified Defender
  • CyberArkCertified Trustee
  • BroadcomSymantec DLP Administration, Technical Specialist
  • ForcepointDLP System Engineer
  • ForcepointCertified DLP Administrator
  • ForcepointDLP Services Professional
  • ForcepointCertified Email Security Professional
  • ForcepointCertified Web Security Professional
  • FortinetNSE 4, Network Security Professional
  • SophosFirewall Certified Engineer
  • CiscoCCNA, Routing, Switching and WAN
  • MicrosoftAzure Security Engineer Associate
  • MicrosoftAzure Administrator Associate
  • MicrosoftMCSE, Cloud Platform and Infrastructure
  • MicrosoftMCSE, Securing Windows Server
  • MicrosoftMCSA, Windows Server 2012 and 2016
  • MicrosoftServer Virtualization with Hyper-V and System Center
  • MicrosoftCertified Trainer
  • MicrosoftCertified Educator
  • MicrosoftOffice Specialist Master
  • MicrosoftTechnology Associate, nine exams
  • VMwareVCP, Data Center Virtualization
  • VMwarevSphere 6.5 Foundations
  • Android ATCCertified Application Engineer

BLACKVAULT

I founded BLACKVAULT on a simple idea: what we sell, we operate.

Nine solutions built in-house, from SIEM to offensive validation, run every day in our own SOC. A sovereign AI, hosted on our own machines, works up each alert. The analyst decides.

9
solutions built and maintained in-house
24/7
managed SOC, from level 1 to level 3
0
client data handed to an external AI
Discover BLACKVAULT

Blog

What I protect stays confidential. What I learn, I publish.

  • Why I am starting this blog

    Eleven years in the field leave notes, methods and a few scars. Here is what I plan to do with them, and what you will not find here.

All articles

Let’s talk about your security

A project, an audit, a training session, a talk: tell me where you stand. I reply personally.

Youssef Laanaya in a light shirt, arms crossed.

Your details are used only to reply to you. Privacy policy